


Disparity

by draco_somnians



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-15
Updated: 2010-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:38:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draco_somnians/pseuds/draco_somnians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag for "Stargate: Continuum". Sam's thoughts in the alternate timeline.  Warnings: Canon character death, a little bit of violence, but no more than we saw on screen. Word count: 1,123.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disparity

The scene replays over and over in her dreams. Every night she wakes, shaking and sweaty, tears streaming from her eyes and the acidic taste of vomit on her tongue. She sees the blade slice into his chest, the blood seeping out as he crashes to the floor and struggles to take his last few breaths. Sometimes it plays out exactly as she remembers, others she's dragged away kicking and screaming, or she falls to his side and is unable to tell him one last time that she loves him before he draws his last breath.

There's never a variation where he survives.

Every night she wakes. She hasn't had a full night's sleep for weeks. She wonders if the other two are having the same problem. She considers calling them, but knows the Air Force will just move her further away if she tries to contact them. She half wishes she was closer to Colorado Springs, but also knows she'd never be able to resist the temptation of trying to find anything that resembles her old life; she can barely resist calling Daniel everyday as it is and she's finally managed to ration herself to one email a week to Mitchell.

She tries to shut her mind down, tries to remember the Kel'no'reem techniques Teal'c taught her years ago, but her head races. She sighs and decides to get out of bed until she's feeling calmer. As her feet pad softly across her apartment floor her thoughts wander to Jack again, as they so often do at this hour. Needing to distract herself, she eyes the PC in the corner of the room and considers the very limited internet access they've allowed her. As the screen flickers to life she reflects on Hank Landry's words. Do they have the right to take this life away from Jack? She's knows in her head that the world isn't supposed to be like this. She knows that when Ba'al does arrive, and she's positive he will, they've got very little chance of defending themselves, but her heart aches when she thinks of what they'd be destroying.

She opens the browser and pauses. She's got to this stage so many times, but always stopped herself, knowing she could be fuelling her head with more torturous images. She's not sure what pushes her this time to type "Charlie O'Neill Colorado Springs" into the search engine and hit enter. She closes her eyes, knowing she's going to regret whatever she finds and half hoping her browser will tell her there's no way in hell Big Brother is going to let her access any pages with his name on. She opens them to hundreds of results. It takes a while to trawl through them, but as she opens one page she knows she's found him. Jack's dark chocolate eyes stare at her from the photograph of a hockey team holding a trophy, topped with an unruly crop of brown hair. Charlie O'Neill, almost a carbon copy of his father. She smiles and as much as she wants her old life back, she begins to think Landry may be right.

After surfing around for a while, checking emails which she's sure are monitored closely, her curiosity is piqued again. She has a video saved on the hard drive which she hasn't been able to watch yet. The footage of "her" memorial service. She's surprised they let her access so much, but figures they probably think she's doing no harm looking. She opens the file and finally clicks on play. She watches the standard service, like so many she's heard before, and finds it a little surreal to hear her own eulogy, and hear details of a life that's not hers. The camera pans around the crowd gathered and she recognises a few faces, surprised to see McKay and Dr. Lee in the group.

Before she has half a chance to wonder how their paths crossed in this life, her heart seems to stop and her blood runs cold, as she sees a variation she never expected. The camera pans towards her brother, stood with a woman who looks remarkably like his high school girlfriend and children who are not her nephew and niece. Next to him stands her father in his full dress uniform, with his arm around a woman, and a strangled sound escapes from her throat as she realises who it is. She looks so much older than Sam can remember, but those blue eyes are unmistakeably her mothers. Her long blonde hair tied back, very little make up and a pained expression on her face. Her whole body is trembling now as she stares, mesmerised by the sight of her parents, together, alive, and grieving for their daughter. Her mind suddenly busts into dozens of questions, her heart begins to race and her eyes swim with tears. The camera moves away and she automatically hits the rewind button, pausing the video on the clearest shot of her family.

The next few hours she spends in front of that same image, her head buzzing with questions, scenarios, possibilities and she even manages to half convince herself that she could claim NASA made a mistake, that she wasn't dead after all and she could go home and join her family. Stranger things have happened where she's from.

Except this isn't her family. This isn't her life. She knows her mother's death changed everything and she's probably nothing like the Samantha Carter of this timeline. Hell, her dad and brother definitely won't be the same men. She closes the window on her desktop and shuts down the PC.

She knows they have to restore their timeline. She knows Jack is happy in this world, but she also knows they won't beat the Go'uld without him. She knows Cam always says he's fairly happy, enjoying having a break from work, but she knows him well enough to know that just waiting for something to happen is driving him crazy. Daniel, well it breaks her heart when she thinks of what Daniel has lost, not only physically. They have to fix this. When the time comes, they have to fix it.


End file.
